Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Neglect  5/10/2024

Brian McLaren taught me: “What you focus on determines what you miss.”

I have compassion for those who neglect the gifts of leadership that God gives women by focusing on a letter written in reaction to Paul decades after Paul’s death — 1 Timothy — “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” When men want to grasp power, this regressive line is their battle cry of patriarchy. 

I’m thankful for those in my life who continue to widen my angle of focus. I’m grateful I don’t have to miss….

women who were leaders in the Hebrew Scriptures 

ways Jesus raised and praised women he encountered

female disciples who faithfully witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion by the empire

every first Easter sermon in all the gospels preached by women

the women Paul named as interpreters, ministers, apostles, prisoners, financial backers, co-workers

“In Christ there is no longer male and female” for all of you are one Galatians 3:28

I am inspired by the vision of women scholars, healing my limited sight with new perspectives. I am transformed by the voices of Sophia/wisdom that defeat my deafness and open my ears to cries and whispers. My lameness is being healed as I learn to walk beside and not over other human beings. I’m emboldened by women who teach me to “speak the truth in love” and not remain mute/dumb.

At some point in the evolution of my church, a group of men in suits, ties, and wing-tipped shoes discussed, prayed, and voted to heed God’s call to allow women to be servant leaders as deacons, elders, and ministers of the word and sacrament. “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”

Who are the most significant women in your life? Where have you seen the pendulum swing toward and away from equality? How have you been transformed by women’s wisdom?

Mother’s Day extra credit: read the prophet Hosea, chapter 11 to listen for maternal images of God. (If you don’t have a Bible, various translations are free online — not just from a salesman)

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Split Second

We’ve just returned from visiting the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If we visited it 1.5 billion years ago, we’d cross flat land and a river. If we visited a thousand years from now, we’d see one yard cut larger than today. I guess we went at just the right time – “be here now”.

Staring five miles across to the south rim and one mile down to the Colorado River continuing creation, you can see layers of history in diversified art. Since our little planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, we were seeing over one fourth of earth time.

Brian McLaren writes in his book “Do I Stay Christian?” – “the universe isn’t in a hurry by human standards. It has been unfolding and expanding, diversifying and beautifying in its current form for 13.7 billion years. If we compressed the universe’s whole existence into one year, our planet doesn’t even form until September 11. The first forms of life don’t emerge on Earth until around September 30, and no multi-cellular organisms evolve until December 14. The dinosaurs rule the earth from December 27 to 30, and the first humans don’t appear until December 31 at 11:39 p.m. Jesus comes on the scene at 11:59:56, which means that all of Christianity has existed for a mere four seconds. Four seconds!”

We are small infants who need this creation and each other to survive. We have the ability to destroy our species all by ourselves. We have the ability to be partners with the creator and all other creatures to save it. In the split second we have to decide, what will we do? Where are you called by a creator to do love for this creation and all creatures in it?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Good Enough

I’m always looking for a good daily devotional. Allow me to share with you one that was shared with me. “Good Enough: 40ish devotionals for a life of imperfection”, written by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie last year. 

I figure, when I underline half the preface the non-Roman numeral pages must be meaning-full, too. 

Pg xi – Truths to start loving more:

  • We are made for interdependence.
  • We are fragile… and so is everyone else. But we can learn to live beautifully inside our limited bodies.
  • Yes, our stupid, imperfect, ordinary lives can be holy.
  • Life will break your heart, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you know that.
  • Sometimes joy and laughter and absurdity are the exact medicine we need, but also we need actual medicine. We love actual medicine, too.

Pg xv – A Blessing for a Joyfully Mediocre Journey

  • Blessed are you when you realize there is not enough – time, money, resources.
  • Blessed are you who are tired of pretending that raw effort is the secret to perfection. It’s not. And you know that now.
  • Blessed are you who need a gentle reminder that even now, even today, God is here, and somehow that is good enough.
Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 4 Comments

Whopper War

A seminary summer in Clinical Pastoral Education was at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta. In three months, I encountered more situations than in three years of ministry. My peers and I received supervised reflection on our pastoral care that helped us mature three years in three months.

One encounter was not with a patient but with another student chaplain from an evangelical college. Here’s the verbatim between me (M) and the other chaplain (OC).

M: I just had a Burger King Whopper for lunch and I’m a happy man.

OC: Wait until you have a Hardee’s burger; you’ll change your mind.

M: I’ve had a Hardee’s burger; I just prefer a whopper.

OC: Oh you couldn’t; Hardees makes the best burgers, period. Maybe they didn’t cook it right that day.

M: Actually I’ve had several Hardee’s burgers. It’s not that I don’t like their burgers; it’s that I like a whopper more.

OC: I don’t believe you. If you really had a Hardee’s burger, you’d know they’re the best. They’re the only way to go.

M: (Long pause) I’m confused.  Are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don’t have your permission to have my own taste? Or are your refusing to acknowledge that it’s possible I could prefer something you don’t? “Have it your way.”

Actually I didn’t say “have it your way” then, but I couldn’t resist the irony now.

A few days later, that guy visited a bed-fast patient — talk about a captive audience. He tried every manipulation he had to get the man “saved” — with his limited definition of what “saved” meant to him. When he was questioned in “group” if that was ethical for a chaplain, he said: “If I don’t save them; they’ll go to hell.” That’s a lot of responsibility — to be in charge of who goes to hell and Hardee’s.

A week later he quit the student chaplain program and entered Pharmacy School. I hope and believe God has used his gift of exactly seeing things one way to save lives as a pharmacist. 

18 years later, Burger King began using the ad line “if you ask us, it just tastes better.” No royalties came my way.

Where do you see signs of only seeing things “my one way” in the media, politics or religion? How do you respond to the growth of white Christian nationalism in our midst? How do you receive different perspectives from other people?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Dialogue (Part 1 & 2)… & 3 & 4

Last night our three sisters and brothers-in-law got to see Chicago in concert in Kansas City. The second song was led by the author Robert Lamm — Dialogue (Part 1 & 2). As I “sang” the lyrics I could recall screaming the words with Terry Kath’s voice and guitar on the LP at full volume in our Frat house in college. I still want to shout down war, starvation, and “repression closing round” as I hear others say, “if you had my outlook your feelings would be numb — you’d always think that everything is fine.”

A few years before, the inserts and posters of “Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall” set read: “we can change the system”. Dialogue Part 2 proclaimed “we can change the world now, we can save the children, we can make it better, we can make it happen.”

I wonder what parts of Dialogue 1 & 2 I need to hear today? I wonder what Dialogue Part 3 might be about?

One option could be the dialogue in churches about whether the kingdom of God that Jesus talked most about is someplace you go after you die, or is it a vision for the world now? As Brian McLaren writes in his new book “Do I Stay Christian?”, is the church a refrigeration unit before shipment to a final destination, or does following Jesus mean actively working to change our systems that are leading to the violent or climatic destruction of our whole ecosystem. Is God’s goal to throw away our world like garbage (after pulling “my tribe out”), or is God showing us ways to save creation now?

I believe and I hope Dialogue 4 would repeat 2: “we can change the world now, we can save the children, we can make it better, we can make it happen.” What dialogues do you see going on? When have you heard, “Will you try to change things with the power that you have: the power of a million new ideas”?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

Skyhook

Friday’s story was about our three-year-son driving our minivan with minimal damage to objects or persons. How fleeting life can be. The way I saw things at the time, I wondered if God had helped to guide his little hand to shift past catastrophic reverse and into a safe drive of a few inches forward. I don’t see it that way today.

I see God as present in and loving his/her/their entire creation—including me. I don’t see our creator as operating some skyhook that rescues some people from the actions of themselves or others, while leaving others behind. From my tradition, I agree with Jesus: children, your Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

Skyhook rescue theology raises concerns for me. I can never answer the “why” question. Why would I be rescued while another suffers who is not rescued?—or the reverse of course! It’s the temptation to act like I am so special, God will rescue me from hitting the ground if I jump off a building (Matthew 4:5-7 and the other accounts of Jesus’ temptations).

Seeing a skyhook is dangerous. The “rapture” conspiracy theory (that is neither Biblical nor faithful as I see it) says God will skyhook people like my tribe before destroying the world. If God doesn’t care about this world and people who are “other” than me, then why should I? Why would I care about others, the environment, or climate change if God is going to throw it all away like garbage?

A divine skyhook takes away our human responsibility to seek answers to rampant violence, including the threat of nuclear destruction. Because God does not and will not rescue us from the consequences of our actions, we might want to reconsider our behavior.

How has skyhook rescue theology been a part of your journey of faith? When have you been reassured by seeing that way? What stumbling blocks came in your path from that perspective?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

What Must I Do to be Saved?

The day after Tuesday’s most recent “massacre of the innocents” (Matthew 2:16-18), I opened my mailbox to find the above propaganda from Congresswoman Vicki Hartzler (or her opponent trying to smear her? — one never knows). One of the many images idolizing violent weapons manufactured to kill people looked like Patty Hearst robbing a bank in 1974. Timing is everything.

Acts 16 is one lectionary passage for this Sunday (timing again?). Paul and Silas are put in chains and in jail, because they healed a slave-girl fortune-teller. They interfered with the business of those who profited from her. It seems you suffer if you lovingly interfere with business profits — however abusive that business is. Times haven’t changed much.

An earthquake frees Paul & Silas from their cells of inaction and chains of silence. Their jailer figures the empire will kill him for allowing prisoners to escape. The jailer asks them, “What must I do to be saved?” He was NOT asking, how to get a ticket to heaven when I die; he was asking how to be saved from this empire of violence and vengeance, domination and hate all around him.

He asks what he must DO and the two tell him what to do. Believe, follow, live the life of Jesus and you and your household will be saved. Practice the life of love, sharing, community, equality, justice, peace, non-violent, active resistance to evil, and you will be saved from this system — you and your household. Find ways to participate in grace and peace everyday.

That is the question I keep hearing this week. After another arsenal annihilation, what must I do? What actions am I called to take in response? What must I do to be saved from violence, vengeance, weapons, war, autocrats, businesses profiteers who silence any dissent? What are you called to do? How might you grow in love and non-violent resistance to bring any hope of salvation to this household of our nation and world?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Chicken? Chow Mein

When I became Kitchen Steward for the Sigma Chi Fraternity at Emory in 1977, I was given many recipes that had been collected over the years to help me plan daily meals for 86 brothers. One dinner was Chicken Chow Mein.

C.C.M. was popular with past kitchen stewards because it was cheap when the budget got tight. Several #10 cans of chicken chow mein and more cans of fried noodles cost less than any meal in the repertoire. C.C.M. was popular with our beloved cooks, Ethel & Pearl. Open, pour, heat… one pot clean-up… home early.

C.C.M. was not popular with anyone who tried it. What little “chicken” there was among the soggy celery was questionable. The watery sauce was gray—the color of a mouse. We were actually relieved to find it had no flavor (spare us the imagined alternative). 

Each person could “sign off” one meal a week and almost everyone got in a long line to sign off the night chicken chow mein was up.

After my second experience of mass sign-off protest, I took our last #10 can of Chicken Chow Mein down to our chapter meeting and announced its official retirement. As I hung up the can as an iconic reminder of “never again”, I received my only kitchen steward standing ovation.

What is something you keep doing, that you could allow to cease? How did you start on that path in your family system or community system? What steps do you take to discern what to let go? How would your change affect those around you? What would it take for you to act?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Turn the other cheek

Soon after a slap on the LEFT cheek, the Academy tweeted it “does not condone violence of any form.” I thought: “While our industry does not condone violence, we make billions portraying it.”

Two thousand years ago my teacher spoke of a slap to the RIGHT cheek: “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:39). In 2003, Walter Wink (whose lamp glows on my bookshelf) wrote: Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way.

Jesus’ word “resist” means “violently resist” (do thwart an evildoer, but with non-violent action). The “third way” to respond to injustice is (1) not passivity, (2) not violent opposition, but (3) creative non-violent resistance.

So why the RIGHT cheek? In that day, you couldn’t slap with your left palm—it was “unclean” (no toilet paper). You had to use the back of your right hand to slap the right cheek of the other. 

In the culture of Jesus, people in power could demean you and maintain control by giving you a back-handed slap: husbands over wives, masters over slaves, Roman soldiers over the conquered. By turning the other cheek, you were saying, “If you slap me again with your right palm, you will have to treat me as an equal human.”

To (1) passively take it continues the cycle of abuse. To (2) oppose violently would result in your death. To (3) create a non-violent protest leaves the abuser in a quandary—do I treat you as my equal or leave you alone? Jesus then gives two more illustrations on transforming systems of injustice, and inviting evildoers to become transformed themselves.

Mahatma Gandhi (a student of Jesus), the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (a disciple of Jesus) and countess others have used a variety of creative, non-violent actions to resist evil, transform enemies with love, and change the world.

How have you been taught to interpret “turn the other cheek” in your life? What are the usual results of passivity or violent opposition? How have you been transformed by the actions of another person’s love? In what situations are you called to action to creatively,  non-violently resist an evildoer?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 7 Comments

Tradition

We experienced the musical “Fidler on the Roof” at the University of Missouri this week. We were transported to a Jewish Russian village in 1905 when the Tsar used “Pogroms” to bury any dissent—even against those who weren’t part of the first revolution. “Pogram” is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” 

As a familiar Bible story gives new meaning in various contexts of our experience, Kyiv’s place in that story had a new place in my heart. I felt for those who experienced unwarranted abuse in a play, an invasive war, and the senate that day.

The opening song “Tradition” transported me to a different place—my high school German class. Our teacher used the German version of “Fiddler on the Roof” as one way to learn German. While I remember the love and drinking songs better, I can still belt out some tradition in German—especially the fiddler intro that we heard a hundred times. 

Maybe that’s why I remember this quote from my 20s: “TRADITION IS THE LIVING FAITH OF DEAD PEOPLE; TRADITIONALISM IS THE DEAD FAITH OF LIVING PEOPLE.” I have sought to live out the traditions that bring us life, while questioning the traditionalisms that kill our spirit. 

Tevye wrestles with traditionalism views of marriage that threaten to destroy his family, while holding onto the life-giving traditions of his community. Each “on the other hand” spoken to God echoes the battle between traditionalism and tradition in equality, justice, marriage, politics, and the church.

When have the arts (a song, movie, play, painting….) given you new insights to your journey? How have traditionalisms drained you of the abundant life? How do traditions of the dead help you live more fully today?